


Our Love Will Be In Virtual Space

by lady_ragnell



Series: Prompt Reposts [3]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-02-11 16:33:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2075199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan gets a very flirtatious anon in his tumblr inbox, and he has no idea what to do about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr, where I sent myself a lot of awkward asks while writing. Please forgive the timestamps on the screencaps.
> 
> This fic was almost entitled "turn me (an)on." Instead, it is titled from Felicia Day's "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?" There need to be more love songs about tumblr.

[Image: an anonymous tumblr ask with text “you are gorgeous enough to eat right up <3”]

Athelstan blinks at his inbox, and blinks again, but it says the same thing. He had a little surge of followers over the night, which he often does after he posts a video, especially one of the ones where he writes a song about whatever historical event he’s discussing. However, he really didn’t think the Reformation would get this strong a response, considering there isn’t even music in this one. While sometimes the reblogs of his posts talk about how cute he is, mostly it’s people genuinely interested in history. He doesn’t know quite what to do with this.

In the end, he doesn't answer the message directly, just leaves it in his inbox and writes a breezy text post: _Hey, response to the latest video was really great (even if some of you are teasing me)! Thank you to everyone who watched, and the next video will come next week like always._

That should be the end of it. Sometimes an anon gets it into their mind to say how great a person is instead of how terrible, and apparently his inbox was the one this one chose. It’s a nice message, even if it was teasing, and he doesn't delete it from his inbox like he does a lot of asks that he doesn't answer directly for whatever reason, just leaves it there with his more academic conversations.

 

*

[Image: an anonymous tumblr ask with text “not teasing, darling, we've been watching and loving your videos for a while now. you should do a new song, something for the viewers out there”]

Athelstan has another message the next morning, and he blinks it at for a few minutes, even less sure what he’s supposed to think, much less how to respond.

After a few minutes of consternation, he gives up and messages Helga on Skype, because she’s his go-to person for tumblr problems. She speaks the language fluently. “I seem to have a persistent anon,” he says when she calls him almost instantly, like he sent an SOS and not just a _can we talk when you have a minute?_

She frowns the second he says the words. “Is someone harassing you, sweetie? You can report that.”

“No, they’re … flirting, I think? Calling themselves ‘we’ and saying I’m gorgeous and asking me to post a new song.”

She hums, leaning back on her bed, a lot more relaxed than she was a moment before. “Is that bad? Just because they’re nice doesn’t mean they shouldn’t fuck off.”

“I don’t think it’s bad. I’m just confused.”

“Well …” She makes a thoughtful noise, and picks up a bowl of what looks like soup from the nightstand next to her bed. It's around dinnertime where she is. “You could always do a song. You’ve got that one on the Wars of the Roses, right? Do it for next week’s video. See what their response is.”

“Maybe I will.” Athelstan shrugs even though she's looking away at the moment. “It can’t hurt, anyway, I would have done it in a few weeks either way.”

“That’s my boy. Tell me all about how it goes.”

She changes the subject to her new boyfriend, and Athelstan listens to her talk and relegates the thought of the message to the back of his mind.

 

*

In his next video, he starts by saying “I've had some requests from some viewers asking for more songs, so you're getting this one before you would have otherwise. I hope you enjoy, whoever you are—you're always welcome in my inbox off anon, if you like.”

Right away, the reblogs have speculation about who and what he's talking about, but it isn't until that night that he gets “Someone asked a question” in his e-mail inbox.

[Image: an anonymous tumblr ask with text “just call us your anonymous admirers. we don't want to scare you off by saying who we are”]

His anon (or anons, as it seems to be) seem determined not to tell him who they are, but it's nice, if strange, to have professed admirers. He’s not sure what to do with the plural, or the fact that any question of what to do about it is taken out of his hands by his inability to answer without all his followers seeing what’s going on, but he's not sure if he really _should_ do anything, when they know him but he doesn't know a thing about them.

Athelstan doesn't do anything but read and save the messages and tell Helga about them, really, but he smiles whenever he gets a new one and it makes Helga laugh instead of worry that he's turning into a hermit, so he's glad, even if the situation is a little awkward.

 

*

It goes on for more than a month. Athelstan will sometimes get one message in a week and sometimes two in a day. The writers express admiration for his looks, his passion about history, his music, his intelligence. They’re always flirtatious, and sometimes risque, and Athelstan is never sure whether to blush or to allow himself to enjoy those messages, since the writers seem to take care never to cross the line into flirting so much it makes him uncomfortable. He's not sure how they do it, since he has no way of responding to them without splashing his business all over his blog, but he's amazed, by their persistence and their effort.

It feels like he’s being wooed, not just teased, and he doesn’t know what to do with that, either, when he knows almost nothing about them. He knows it’s two people, from repeated uses of the phrase “both of us,” and that they’re probably a man and a woman, and probably in a relationship together, from some other things they've said. He knows they like to tease, and that they like him.

Off tumblr, Athelstan would have even less idea of what to do (a couple in a relationship flirting with him? The thought makes him choke with embarrassment, he can’t imagine the reality). On it, it’s exciting, even good.

The question is only what he’s supposed to do if things change.

 

*

Athelstan wakes one morning to fifty-four new followers, an explosion of likes and reblogs and asks, and only one ask that explains any of that.

[Image: an anonymous tumblr ask with text “Hey have u seen that Ragnar and Lagertha recced ur blog in one of their xxx vids???”]

Athelstan stares at the message for a moment and then googles “Ragnar and Lagertha,” since the words don’t mean anything to him. The top link is a tumblr, url “lagerthaandragnar,” and when he clicks, he almost closes the tab immediately because the header of the blog is two very naked bodies in black and white, twined together, obviously in the middle of sex.

Helga is, thank God, green on Skype, so he calls her immediately, still staring at the header. “Apparently pornographers talked about me in their video,” he says the second she picks up.

She chokes on the sandwich bite she was in the middle of chewing. “Who what with who now?”

“Should I watch it? Is it good tumblr karma to watch potentially pornographic videos that mention me?”

“Yes!” She pauses to consider that, probably remembering the thing walls in his apartment. “With headphones. Whose video?”

“Ragnar and Lagertha, apparently.”

Helga chokes again. “Holy shit, Athelstan. You attract the best pornographers. Watch it, seriously, see what they say about you. I am going to hang up and you are going to watch it right now and so am I, and then in about twenty minutes you will call me again, and we'll talk about it. But seriously, twenty minutes, I have needs.”

Athelstan was already blushing, but his face goes even redder at that. “Okay, Helga. I’ll talk to you when I’m over my embarrassment enough to make eye contact.”

She laughs as he hangs up on her, and he stares at the video at the top of the page for a few minutes before, finally, he presses play.

The lights come up in a bedroom, a naked couple sprawled out on the bed, smiling at the camera.

They’re both gorgeous and terrifying, made-up and tattooed, his hand casually playing with her nipple, and Athelstan catches his breath, close to pressing pause already. “It’s been a while since we did a Q&A,” says the woman, and grins, a dangerous expression. “So we thought we would do a good game of seeing how many questions we can answer before we come.”

They shift until they’re in profile to the camera, and she settles on top of him, straddling his hips, and picks up a stack of index cards. “Remember,” says the man, “don’t do this without condoms unless you have a committed partner or some test results. Lagertha? First question?”

Athelstan watches in fascination as they toss questions and answers back and forth as Lagertha rides Ragnar, discussing equipment and positions and words he doesn’t even have meanings for.

“Oh, here’s a good one,” says Lagertha close to the end of the video. “Tumblr user longboatsandlongfucks wants to know if we have any other blogs we recommend.” She rattles off a list of urls, and then she grins down at Ragnar. “What do you think, should we?”

Ragnar gasps and thrusts a little harder. “May as well.” He turns his head to grin at the camera. “Not a porn blog, for those of you out there who only want those, but for anyone who likes history, Athelstan over at lindisfarnehistory makes great videos, does some little songs, and he’s gorgeous to boot, and—”

Lagertha is shuddering above him, pausing in her steady movements, and Ragnar grins. “And that looks like all the questions we can answer for you today.”

Athelstan stops the video even though there’s still another minute in it and takes a deep breath, noticing almost as an afterthought that he’s hard. He’s stuck on the word “gorgeous” and all the other things that add up a little too well.

“Oh my God,” he says, and goes back to reread the messages even though he thinks he already knows the answer.

 

*

When Helga finally convinces him (after a week and forty more tumblr followers, after Athelstan going through twenty of their videos and then rewatching a recent one where Lagertha, in the middle of a blowjob, looked up and said almost too quietly for the camera to pick up, “Are you thinking about him?”) to get in touch, Athelstan can only bring himself to do it anonymously. It feels obvious to him, but at least there’s plausible deniability, if they aren’t his anon after all.

[Image: an anonymous tumblr ask with text “You should really ask people before you talk about them in pornographic videos.”]

After that, he waits. It’s morning, and they never have much activity in the mornings from what he can tell, so he calls Helga and lets her tell him that it’s all going to be fine, and he reblogs a post about the spice trade to add a few sources, and then he kicks himself firmly off tumblr for a while.

When he gets back to his computer, he checks his e-mail first, and there in his inbox is the subject line “lagerthaandragnar asked a question.”


	2. Almost a Year Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Athelstan finally meets his anons, who haven't been anon for quite some time now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone prompted me for a continuation of this in my most recent round of prompts, and it was originally posted [here](http://theladyragnell.tumblr.com/post/112576636913/prompts-something-in-the-our-love-will-be-in).

It's been almost a year, and Athelstan hasn't met them.

It's hard to, when they live several countries away and he doesn't make a lot of money, and it's hard to know whether he should, considering he doesn't know what their relationship even is. Considering it started with anonymous messages and them talking about him in their porn, they've been quiet and careful ever since. They haven't taken anything back, but they flirt, and they talk to him all they can, and Athelstan knows that the second he offers anything, they'll take it without hesitation. So they talk, and Athelstan talks back, and there's been a stalemate for a long time.

Today, they're all on a video chat, and Athelstan has his laptop propped up so he can make dinner while the two of them sit on their couch, and it's only on a whim that Athelstan says “Someone asked me today if I'm going to be in one of your videos.”

He expects them to laugh. Ragnar laughs at everything and Lagertha thinks it's funny when he's prim, so it seems like a good bet. He likes making them laugh, when he can, even if he's never exactly been good at jokes. Instead, though, there's a silence long enough he's afraid he lost the connection, and when he looks away from his pot of stew they're both staring at him, frowning. “They have no right to be asking you that,” Lagertha finally says. “I know there's been speculation, but we talk about this, in some of our videos, about people making the choice or not making the choice to put their sex lives online.”

“I know you do.” It's much easier to watch them talking seriously about consent and BDSM etiquette than it is to watch them have sex, and Athelstan wonders if it's not quite a coincidence that the frequency of those videos has gone up in the past year. “I get an ask about it occasionally these days, I thought you would have expected that.”

“There's a reason we only talk about you professionally on Tumblr.” Ragnar stands up and paces a few steps away from the camera. Athelstan hears something fall, or perhaps get thrown against a wall.

“Are you okay with it?” Lagertha asks, glaring off-camera at Ragnar.

“I thought you would think it's funny,” Athelstan says, spreading his hands, not quite sure what else to do to make the tension go out of the conversation. “It's not exactly what I want people to be watching my videos for, but I wouldn't change my friendship with you either.”

“Friendship.” Lagertha doesn't drag the word out, doesn't put any emphasis on it, but the fact that she repeated it all makes him feel like she's turning the concept over in her mind. “We have a conference in London, in two weeks. I've been trying to figure out how to bring it up. Do you want to meet?”

Athelstan takes just a second too long to gather himself from that, because it's so unexpected he doesn't even have a response prepared, nothing to stop him blurting out, without any grace or subtlety at all, “Of course I do, I'd love to, just tell me when and where.”

She smiles a little, and Ragnar comes back on the camera, watching his wife more than Athelstan but smiling too. “We don't have our flight details worked out, but I'll tell you when we do. I want to see you first thing.”

“I would love that. I really would.”

“Then it's settled,” says Ragnar, pacing off screen again. He's always doing it during video chats, can't stand still for a second even for Athelstan. “Be excited, Athelstan, you get to show us all around London, it's been years since we've been and we didn't have a native guide then.”

“Won't you have conference things to do?”

Lagertha waves a hand. “Let us worry about that. You just worry about flight details and then figuring out how to have as much free time as humanly possible while we're there.”

Athelstan smiles. “I think I can manage that.”

*

They don't let Athelstan meet them at the airport, claiming they don't want him to see them before they've had a chance to check into their hotel, so he meets them for dinner instead, on the day they arrive, at some restaurant they looked into on a friend's recommendation and told him to meet them at, for all their protestations about learning London from him. He should have known it would end up being the other way around.

He's outside the restaurant when they arrive, and he hears them laughing halfway down the block and realizes he has no idea what to do. They're coming closer, bent together, they haven't seen him yet, and he has the absurd urge to run. Lagertha's hair is back and sleek, and she's wearing a dress, and Ragnar is ambling with his hands in his pockets, already grinning.

“Hi,” he says when they're close enough that he doesn't have to yell, and it comes out so breathless they shouldn't hear him, but they do, and then all three of them are standing at an impasse a few yards away from each other.

Ragnar is the first one to move, and he does it fast, because his arms are around Athelstan before Athelstan can even think of what to do, squeezing so tight Athelstan loses what little air he's been able to collect. Lagertha is there a second later, a warmth at his side and the faint smell of something like fruit, maybe her shampoo.

“Look at you, you're taller than I thought,” says Ragnar when he pulls away, sounding delighted about it.

“Ragnar, you aren't his aunt.” Lagertha kisses Athelstan on the cheek. “I'm so glad to see you without a screen between us.”

“Me too.” He nods at the door when she lets him go. “Shall we go in? It's a little chilly outside.”

“By all means,” says Ragnar, holding the door open for both of them. He hasn't stopped grinning once, and he takes Athelstan's coat when they're shown to a table and even pulls his chair out for him, which is enough to assure Athelstan that he's in for a very strange night.

*

Athelstan had never quite realized, during their video chats, just how much Ragnar and Lagertha touch—each other, yes, but it extends to him easily too, always a hand on his wrist, his arm, a foot resting against his ankle, some other point of contact.

By the end of dinner, they've wasted hours, to the point where the waitresses are looking impatient, and Athelstan is feeling warm with the wine and the company. Most of his friends, his best ones, are people he knows online. It's strange being in the same room as these particular ones.

“You must have an early morning tomorrow, for the conference,” he finally says, with regret. “I have tomorrow off work, though, you can call me whenever you have some time free.”

They exchange a look, one of the ones he recognizes best from their videos, a wealth of conversation where neither of them has to say a word. “You're possibly the least suspicious person in the world,” says Ragnar finally. “It's adorable, but I sort of worry about you.”

Athelstan blinks, not expecting that. “What on earth do you mean?”

“When do we ever go to conferences? Sure, we have passes to this one, but we didn't two weeks ago, and it's not as though we need to network very much for new viewers at the moment. Besides, porn conferences are stuffy.” Lagertha smiles. Athelstan can't imagine what his face looks like, imagining that. “The old guard, you know? Even in London. But it was happening, so we knew it would be an excuse.”

“Why did you need one so suddenly? I would have met you if you just said you were coming on vacation.”

“We thought …” Ragnar looks at Lagertha, who nods. “We thought if other people were asking you if we're going to have a threesome, we should at least do you the courtesy of asking ourselves. And it seemed gauche not to do it in person.”

Athelstan swallows, throat suddenly tight. “Do you want to? Or do you just feel you should, because of everyone else asking?”

“You've known from the very beginning what we want from you, or part of it,” says Lagertha. “We're just waiting for you. And we'll go to the conference if you need some time to think it over.”

Athelstan breathes out. “What if I called you in the morning?”

Ragnar grins. “We would set an alarm and pick up the phone. One night is a lot better than we thought we would have to wait.”

“Don't rush him,” says Lagertha, and looks at her phone. “It's past your bedtime, Athelstan, and given the time change past ours too. We'll walk you as far as you want us to, if you like.”

“We have a few streets together.” Athelstan stands up, and isn't surprised when the bill magically vanishes before he can see it. “And I don't feel rushed. I just need the final decision at this point.”

“Well.” Lagertha puts her arm through his. “As Ragnar said, we'll set an alarm.”

*

“Good morning,” says Lagertha on the phone, and it only reaffirms Athelstan's decision that he knows what her voice sounds like when she's just had sex. “You are very prompt.”

There's some rustling, and what sounds like Ragnar's voice saying “speaker,” and then Ragnar coming across the line saying “So, are we meeting for breakfast? Coming to your place?”

“I thought ...” This decision has been made for months, really, if he admits it to himself. He thought about it all last night, but he knew the whole time it would just be figuring out how to say yes. “I thought I might come to your hotel. I know where it is.”

“And you've got the day off,” says Lagertha, and it sounds like she's smiling.

“We'll order some room service and tell them in the lobby to issue you a keycard,” says Ragnar. “And we'll be waiting for you when you get here.”

“I'm not going to be in your videos,” Athelstan warns, already putting his shoes on, “but I can be in your bed.”

“We'll talk that out when you get here, but don't worry, we aren't filming anything you don't want filmed, I promise.” Lagertha laughs a little, another sound he recognizes from their videos. “But you may have something to watch when you get here.”

“I'll be there soon,” Athelstan says, and hangs up on the sound of them laughing together.


End file.
